REVISITING EINSTEIN-BERGSON DISPUTE – ONLINE WORKSHOP ON JANUARY 7th 2022

Two thousand twenty-two signals the 100th birthday of Bergson and Einstein’s dispute about the nature of time. In 1922, the physicist and the philosopher met at the Société de philosophy in Paris to discuss the impact of the Theory of Relativity on their conceptions about time. The visions that they present seem, at first, irreconcilable. A century later, we propose revisiting and commenting on the debate in a series of communications listed below. Please join us on 7th January 2022 through the link

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83615470359

ID da reunião: 836 1547 0359

PROGRAMME

9.30-9:40 – Introduction

9:40 - 10:25 – Opening Session: Prof. Dr. Élie During: 3 lessons from the Bergson-Einstein dispute

Deleuze suggested that a good way to evaluate the meaning of a philosophical position on any given subject is to try and identify a mistake, an oversight and a concept: a global error committed by other philosophers, an essential insight that has been missed as a result, and finally a specific philosophical construction designed to redress that mistake and make up for that oversight. I shall follow these guidelines in order to better address the philosophical lessons behind Bergson’s argument with Einstein. Briefly stated: the error is the exclusive focus on time’s passage or the dimension of succession (and the resulting oscillation between hopeless defences of absolute time and philosophical reveries about the 4D “block-universe”); the insight to be recovered is the cosmic significance of simultaneity (rather than the primacy of “lived”, subjective time); the concept is that of thick (or regional) simultaneity, an essential but oft-neglected component of Bergsonian “duration”.

10:45 -11:15 – 2nd Session – Prof. Dr. Paulo Crawford: Albert Einstein, Henri Bergson, and the following debate on the nature of time

On April 6, 1922, at the French Philosophical Society in Paris, a historical debate took place, between the physicist Albert Einstein and the respected French philosopher Henri Bergson, concerning the nature of time. For Einstein, time was what a clock measure; but for Bergson, if we did not have a sense of time, we would not be led to build clocks and use them in the first place. However, the study of time is a problem of physics. So, how should we answer the question: what is time?  In simple terms one can say that one thing is the physical process of the time flow, and another is the psychological experience of time. On the other hand, Einstein was mainly concerned with the connection between space and time and not merely on the definition of time. Indeed, for Einstein two identical clocks in two different gravitational fields would be measuring different times. And it was this disparity of these two identical clocks, in two different locations, that troubled the concept of time.  So, this debate, between the old and respected philosopher and the comparative young and less revered physicist, exposed the difficulties of the acceptance and appropriation of the theory of relativity, which continued in the following decades, involving several philosophers and scientists, both in scientific centers as well as in the peripheries. However, nowadays the great majority of scientists, physicists or otherwise, accept the results and predictions of the general theory of relativity, when applied to the solar system or to the universe, but there is still room fora a dispute about the nature of time, particularly when one wants to connect general relativity with quantum theory.  However, the “nature of time” in the contest of quantum gravity is still an open question, discussed by various physicists, like Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli.

11:25 - 11:55 – 3rd Session – Dr. Elton Marques: In defense of Einstein

The debate on whether simultaneity is absolute or relative, contrary to what one might think, was not closed with the success of special relativity. Different interpretations of that theory – or different versions of it – still arouse interest in many philosophers of science, some scientists and a vast number of metaphysicians. Usually, those who challenge the more widely accepted version of the theory point out empiricist and verificationist commitments at the heart of that theory. Since Einstein himself acknowledges empiricism, to point out flaws in that underlying epistemology would be a way of challenging some theses shared by classical versions of relativity, for instance, relativity of simultaneity. But is it enough, in order to challenge well-established results, to show the weak empiricist foundations? In this article, I set out to defend that, despite Einstein’s notorious endorsement of empiricism, one is not required to understand the result known as ‘relativity of simultaneity’ as dependent on any form of verificationism. I thus attempt to provide a defence of relative simultaneity which takes into account its purported advantages, as well as the difficulties pointed out by its critics.

12:05 - 12:35 – 4th Session – Dr. Sara Coelho: About Time: How neuroscience sees Bergson and Einstein’s quarrel

In 1922, Bergson and Einstein met at a conference to present their thoughts about the nature of time. At first sight, their views appeared incompatible. For Einstein, time is represented in space, measurable and dependent on reference systems. On the contrary, for Bergson, time is out of space, and it is not mensurable but a qualitative feeling traced by memory. Neuroscience tries to explain time and time perception by recurring to cerebral processes and psychological models to represent time in the brain. Some neuroscientists believe that brain processes are an analogue of what happens in the universe, bridging mental time with physical time. Duration is the facet of time perception mainly studied. It is evaluated through interval time judgments, or how long an time interval takes, and through passage of time judgments, related to the perceived speed of the passage of time. A few articles support the idea that mental time is relativistic, associating psychological models of time that explain interval time judgments with the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). However, these studies are based on small time scales and on measuring time intervals. The affective dimension of perceiving time, which Bergson conveys, seems absent from that research. As far as we know, there is no study in neuroscience that tries to accommodate Bergson’s theory of temporal passage to time in the brain, except one article which maps Bergson’s thesis of time and memory onto passage of time judgments. Drawn on the most recent literature about the passage of time judgments, we aim at showing that neuroscience can also incorporate Bergson’s views on time. Unlike the previous neuroscientific time studies referring to STR, articulating Bergson’s thoughts with the passage of time judgments turns out possible to explain larger time scales in human mind, as well as the feelings of the passage of time without reference to space. In conclusion, by the lens of neuroscience, it is possible to accommodate two different visions, which in physical reality seem irreconcilable.

12:45 -14:25 - Lunch Break

14:30 - 15:00 – 5th Session – Prof. Dr. Carlos Fiolhais: The Bergson-Einstein and Goethe-Newton disputes. Analogies and contrasts

In 1922  the French philosopher Henry Bergson and the Germany born physicist Albert Einstein engaged in a well-known dispute about the theory of relativity of the latter, in particular the concept of time. The question is now settled: it is generally recognized that Bergson did not understand the physics of relativity. He even did not consider that the measurement  done  by a clock was a satisfactory definition of time.  On the other hand, Einstein did not make any effort to look at any philosophical dimensions of time. He even said: "There is no time of the philosophers." Bergson addressed intuitive, psychological aspects of time, while Einstein restricted himself to the rational, mathematical aspects.   The result was a complete misunderstanding. This clash has been considered a modern example of the separation between philosophy and physics. If the scientific victory of Einstein cannot be refuted, it is true that Bergson had points  which are today worthwhile thinking. This dispute has a predecessor in the controversy on light and colour which started in 1810 when the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe refused to accept the opticsof the English physicist Isaac Newton. As in the Bergson-Einstein confrontation, we may say that the physics side won clearly, if we adopt the scientific rules. Nevertheless, Goethe's arguments give food for thought. Among others, the physicists Hermann von Helmholtz, in 1853 and 1892,  and Werner Heisenberg, in 1941, wrote about Goethe's "Farbenlehre". We will discuss analogies and contrasts between the two disputes, separated by more than a century, trying to distillate the relevant messages for the contemporary cultural debate.

15:10 -15:40 – 6th Session – Prof. Dr. Carlos João: The real experience of subjective time

In my paper, I will argue that relativistic physics theory about time dilation does not imply an alteration in time duration, as conceived by Bergson. We will consider notions such as the effects of the relative velocity between different referential and the implications of gravitational physics upon time measurements, showing its putative effects on consciousness duration. If my hypothesis is correct, it is possible to conclude that there is no contradiction between Einstein and Bergson visions of time. They are just two different ways to picture time reality. As for physics, time is seen through the mirrors of different referential; for Bergson, time is lived through a qualitative multiplicity of the mind. When Einstein said in 1922 that there is a psychological time and a physical time, he was correct. However, the implicit presupposition was incorrect: subjective time is not an illusion or a hallucination; it’s as real as physics time, although its nature is very different.

15:50 - 16:20 – 7th Session – Prof. Dr. Magda Carvalho: What can a philosophical relation with time bring to experience?

The relationship between Bergson and Einstein has been the subject of different readings interpretations, some of them consisting of an embarrassment that biographers and commentators of the French philosopher have sought to resolve. The publication of Durée et Simultaneité was the public face of the hard debate that took place between the two thinkers, at the Société Française de Philosophie in April 1922. However, it should be stressed that it is not as a physicist that Bergson addresses the Theory of Relativity, but as a philosopher. This means that his analysis and discussion of Relativity did not aim to question the scientific foundations of the Einsteinian theory, but to project its interpretation on a philosophical level, viewing it not only as a new physics, but as a whole new way of thinking. Durée et simultanéité can be considered as the most technical work that Bergson wrote, steeped in equations and mathematical symbols, being also the most intricate from a philosophical point of view. However, it stands out in the author's corpus for being the only one that not only includes in its title his fundamental concept of "duration", but also dedicates a whole chapter to the nature of time. For these reasons, it seems to us that the dialogue with Einstein cannot be ignored. What did that dialogue brought, then, of relevance to the way Bergson thought about time? This will be the question that will guide our intervention.

16:30 - 17:15 – Closing Session - Prof. Dr. Jimena Canales:Bergson's mistake? A historical and philosophical reinterpretation

Since its publication in 2015, much of the attention given to The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time has centered on Bergson’s error in his interpretation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. While the book argues that, when considered strictly in terms of physics, Bergson’s interpretation of the famous “twin paradox” was flawed, this same “mistake” was productive when understood philosophically and humanistically. Through a detailed historical reconstruction of how this mistake came to be and understood as such, this talk explores the possibility of arriving at a concept of truth that may surpass the standards of the physics of its day.